Yankees' rally spoiled by walk-off 6-5 loss to Brewers

Yankees' Ichiro Suzuki cannot catch a ball hit for a single by Milwaukee Brewers' Martin Maldonado during the sixth inning Sunday.

MILWAUKEE – Derek Jeter can still recall the crazy noise echoing at the old Yankee Stadium, where the pauses in “Let’s Go Yankees” chants were filled by cries of “Let’s Go Mets.”

“It was all new,” Jeter said of the first Yankees-Mets interleague meeting in 1997. “You felt as though you had to win the series, it was like the World Series. It was all anyone was talking about.”

Now in his final season, Jeter is the last active player involved in that first Subway Series – a rivalry that resumes tonight in the Bronx.
But the Yankees arrive a bit nicked up and slightly frustrated after Sunday’s 6-5 loss to the Brewers before 43,544 fans at Miller Park.

Hours after learning CC Sabathia was headed to the 15-day disabled list with an inflamed right knee, the Yankees – down to their last strike — were temporarily lifted by Mark Teixeira’s ninth-inning, game-tying solo homer off of former Met closer Francisco Rodriguez.

In the Milwaukee ninth, former Yankee Mark Reynolds’ two-out single off of Adam Warren scored Rickie Weeks from third, giving the Brewers a walk-off victory and interleague series win.

“We were feeling good about ourselves for a few minutes there,” said Teixeira, who belted a full-count change-up over the right field wall.
Weeks’ broken bat, one-out double over first base was just barely fair, according to Teixeira. A wild pitch moved Weeks to third, but Warren struck out Lyle Overbay and had two strikes on Reynolds – who grounded a breaking pitch through the left side.

“I felt like it was a decent pitch,” Warren said. But in that situation, “you’ve got to bury it more.”

As the Brewers (24-14) celebrated, the Yankees (19-17) quietly packed from a 3-3 road trip that began with two wins in Anaheim and ended with two straight losses.

Maybe it’s a good time for a little intracity madness.

While the likes of Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Masahiro Tanaka will experience their first Subway Series, Carlos Beltran will get his first taste of it from a Yankee perspective.

“The fans get really excited, they fight in the stands all the time,” said Beltran, who spent seven seasons as a Met. “But as a player, you’re really focused on paying the game and trying to go out and win.”

Beltran was with the Mets in 2009, when second baseman Luis Castillo dropped Alex Rodriguez’s pop-up in a swirling wind, allowing the winning runs to score in a 9-8 Yankee triumph.

That memory still seemed to sting Beltran, just as the Yankees would like to forget dropping all four games – two in each ballpark on consecutive nights last season.

“It wasn’t any fun going through last year,” said manager Joe Girardi, adding that “it’s always important” to reverse that trend in this year’s similar four-game, home-and-home setup.

Girardi also played in that first Subway Series game in ’97, catching Andy Pettitte in a 6-0 Mets win.

“We lost the first game and it was almost the end of the world,” Jeter said. “I think now it’s toned down a little bit but it’s still fun for us as players. The atmosphere in the city is pretty special … the fans make it exciting.”

And when George Steinbrenner was in the owner’s box, there seemed to be more riding on the outcome.

“He wanted to beat the Mets, he wanted to beat Boston, he wanted to beat Tampa [Bay] at all times,” said Jeter, who missed last season’s Subway Series while recovering from his second left ankle fracture in six months. “It meant a lot to him.”

Meeting the Mets in the 2000 World Series and winning in five games seemed to forever alter the regular-season Subway Series dynamic.

Girardi recalled how he purposely avoided walking the city streets in ’97, because of the over-passionate climate.

These days, Girardi said he’d like to see an odd number of Subway Series games in order to declare a New York champion. But nothing could duplicate the feel of that first night.

“[That’s] what stands out the most,” Jeter said. “It was the old stadium. … It was pretty exciting.”